


The Shaman was too late

by askadromming



Category: Kane and Feels (Podcast)
Genre: Dissociation, False Memories, Hallucinations, Heavy Angst, Horror, M/M, Memories, Shadow people, Violence, kind of, takes place after wonderland, theres a dog
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 15:28:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29761725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/askadromming/pseuds/askadromming
Summary: He shouldn't have taken this case. He really shouldn't have taken this case. Brutus should have known from the beginning that this case was too much for him to do alone. He is standing in the middle of an old abandoned building on Sherbourne Way, staring at where the door out of this hallway should be. The door he just entered through. But instead he is just staring at a wall.-
Relationships: Brutus Feels & Lucifer Kane, Brutus Feels/Lucifer Kane
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	The Shaman was too late

**Author's Note:**

> Quick note, this is not a fluffy fic, and is in a strange cousin to horror, so expect that. There is two scenes with violence of non-human creatures attacking, both are skippable, and are fairly easy to spot.

Brutus Feels has been alone for months now.

Alone in a way. 

Alone, in an "Our apartment has turned into _my_ apartment" kind of way. 

Alone, in an "I've scoured every journal you left behind" kind of way. 

But mostly in the "My partner left and didn't look back" kind of way.

So now, he is standing in the middle of an old abandoned building on Sherbourne Way, staring at where the door out of this hallway should be. The door he _just_ entered through. Yet, now the hallway is an endless, depressing tunnel to a grey haze. And instead of looking at a creaky wooden door, he's just staring at an empty section of badly applied wallpaper.

He shouldn't have taken this case. He _really_ shouldn't have taken this case. Brutus should have known from the beginning that this case was too much for him to do alone. It's bad enough that his research resulted in nothing, but he's also trapped in here, with no one except Jenny knowing where he's gone. Just another lovely afternoon for Brutus Feels. 

-

The darkened passageway looks about as unwelcoming as it could get, but he has no other choice.

He glances back at the wall where the door was but a second ago, and the paranoid thoughts of maybe he's simply insane, or losing his memory, prick into being. The thoughts of maybe he never entered here at all, of he's always been stuck here, of hell, maybe _he's_ the ghost, creep into the back of his head.

But Brutus has been through too goddamned much to fall for those thoughts, so with heavy footsteps and a cold sensation starting to build in his chest, he walks forward. 

As he's walking, Brutus takes out Kane's log of various creatures they've come across and studies the pages half-heartedly for a similar entry to his current case.

Now, he swore when he walked in that there was a figure to his right but, she wasn't there when he looked in her direction, so it seems he's looking for some shadow person who can steal memories and likes to trick people into mazes. Just your classic, everyday ghoul. And, since this is the day he's having, nothing comes up in Kane's journal. Not that he was expecting anything to line up, he'd already scoured that journal a dozen times, but still.

-

Brutus walks in a straight line for five, or ten, or twenty minutes, he hasn't worn a watch in years, and the walk is so monotonous that he has no idea of how long he's actually been walking. He ducks his head under each wooden, scarred doorframe on a quite annoying rhythm, while the dull blue and orange wallpaper's horrible patterns glare angrily in his direction.

Sometime before the two-hundredth, but after the hundredth doorframe, (that he just barely avoids bumping in to), a voice echoes down the hallway. 

With a deep sigh, he grabs the first trinket he can find. Inside one of his many coat pockets, his fingers find a string tethered to a stone. The feeling of a smooth, finely polished stone grazes the back of his cracked and calloused knuckles. When he brings it up into the glow of his torch, he sees a Cat's Eye wrapped in gold thread. Brutus untangles the thread and puts it around his neck. The voices, cruelly whispering from the end of the hallway, retreat from his mind ever so slightly. A feeling of mild relief washes over him, and he adds _spectral whispers_ to his list of "symptoms" for the case, also known as the list of creepy shit that happens while he's investigating.

He continues his trek down the mildewed carpet and considers his stone guard, the Cat's Eye, currently bouncing against his chest with each step. If Brutus was being truthful, he was quite tired when Kane had given it to him and was not listening when he had explained its uses, but some part of Brutus' heart is soothed by its presence. 

-Journal Entry: Cat's Eye-

The Cat's Eye is said to be a facet of wisdom, intelligence and cleverness. 

Traits often connected to cats, I suppose.

Some have said it gives protection from witchcraft, death, and most importantly for our purposes, evil spirits.

It also apparently grounds the wearer, heightens intuition, awareness, and mental acuity. 

And, with a combination of various powders and chants, protects from slander, invisible people, false friends, and the evil eye!

Not all of this is speculation though, and I've found that some creatures, such as faeries, fox spirits, imps, and other trickster-like beings, do seem to be considerably disturbed when put in the vision of the Cat's Eye.

-

With doorframes much too small for Brutus' height, moulded walls, and creaking floorboards underneath musty carpets, this building truly has it all. No wonder it's been abandoned for several decades, he's probably breathing in asbestos with how horrible this building seems to have been made.

Brutus finally fails at avoiding banging his head against the ever-persistent doorframes-without-doors and curses. He takes this moment to pause and look ahead, but the hallway still seems to lay on forever. The purple-grey mist lingering at the far, far end of the hallway seems to draw closer, and he feels strangely dizzy and distant if he stares too long into it.

Brutus looks behind him, and the other direction is the same exact sight, distant mist swirls up the walls, and he swears tendrils of it seem to move in his direction, almost as if it's slowly reaching towards him. Hundreds of doorframes gradually layer the sight in broken segments of hallway.

He supposes he should continue heading forward, keeping an eye out for whatever evil spirit has been entrapping visitors to this hallway, even though that plan seems mildly idiotic. Should he look for a way out? How the hell _is_ he going to get out of here? 

Luce would probably know how, it's the type of thing he was good at. He might make some throwaway comment about a subject, seemingly completely unrelated, a hint of a smile on his face as he deems it fit to not explain. Infuriating. Familiar.

At this lapse in attention on his part, the voices lash out in volume, an unintelligible phrase layered over a thousand voices. Each clamouring to be heard over all the others. The voice's words are then followed by loud, crowded laughter, so much laughter, the laughter is in his head, in his bones, in the floor and the walls, it's _everywhere_.

Brutus stops dead in his tracks and clutches the Cat's Eye hard until the pressure is enough to hurt. He breaths in and out, in and out, until he can't hear his heartbeat in his ears anymore. The laughter gets quieter, though it doesn't take long for them to continue getting louder and louder. It hurts his ears with the dozens of pitches of laughter all combined into one horrifying, overwhelming voice. 

Brutus flips through Kane's journal as the cries rise in volume once again. Nothing clear seems to fit, but he can't fault the journal for it, he has so little to go on. 

The sound of footsteps echo from behind him and he turns around to find nothing. When he turns back he can see a shadow of an opening, a room, straight ahead, just barely visible behind the wispy purplish-grey mist.

So he continues, and though it takes much longer than it should, he gets to the end. 

-

As he approaches what must be the five-hundredth doorframe he's seen today, he sees a beautiful, golden and red room, with high, high domed ceilings so tall it makes him dizzy. He's not on the floor of this room, no. Brutus is on stage. Red curtains edge the corners of his vision, and hundreds, upon hundreds of pristine velvet-red seats, are in front of him, facing him.

A luminous, gold chandelier hangs from the ceiling, matching the gold lining of everything in this room. The floor is a beautiful cherry-red maple, and his boots make resounding clacks across the polished platform.

He swears just a second ago, when he entered, each and every seat was full, silhouettes of people, an audience, all staring at him, waiting for his performance. But no one's there when he looks.

Though the blinding stage lights make it almost impossible to see through, he is certain no one is in the audience, well, no one visible at least. 

He can hear the laughter now. It starts low, but so quickly it spreads, like a wildfire, until it feels like the room is shaking from the resounding weight of _so much laughter._ Dark figures twirl and dance around him, yet they disappear as soon as he looks, and he hears them laughing at his desperate glances around the room. The fast click of heels and derbies waltzing around him reverberate across the stage.

Brutus Feels is dizzy for the third time today. He feels everything closing in on him yet expanding to unimaginable levels at the same time. He is breathing in and out in the same second. Brutus tries to talk, to tell it to let him leave, to rot in hell or something...but it doesn't matter.

That voice is back, and he doesn't know where he is, or what the hell he should do. Sharp pain shoots from his ears and bleeds down to his chest where he feels as if he'll explode. The laughter is so loud, so overpowering, and he looks around, wishing, hoping for something substantial to punch, or trap, or kill, but nothing is there.

Brutus' hands find a container in his satchel containing black salt and he quickly unscrews the lid. And honestly, he has no clue how Kane used it, but it's one of the only things he can think of right now and he doesn't know if time will be lenient enough to let him think of anything better.

He sees couples with twirling skirts, and clawed hands reach for him, and even though they aren't there when he looks, their claws rake through his skin, leaving his blood to splash on the ground. Bloody footprints start appearing all around him, and the voices reverberate, their words and laughter so fucking loud. 

So he shakily pours some salt out in his hands and draws a triangle around him. The claw marks on his hands sting violently with the contact of salt and he drops to his knees as he pours it on the ground. His hands shake enough that he has to redo it a few times, so it's a solid line. 

After a few tense seconds, the numbness has left and the dark figures dancing in the corners of his vision retreat. It worked. Thank someone out there that it worked. 

The voices fade a little, he doesn't know if it's because of the salt, or if it's because of the blood, dripping from his chin and chest.

A mixture of sand, ash, pepper, and salt coats his hands and he lets it stay there. The scratches sting violently, and of course today he forgot to bring, quite literally, any type of medical items. Except for bandaids. He didn't normally use them, but gauze or a wrap to keep his blood in probably wouldn't hurt. 

He's tired of this. He's tired of working alone. He's tired of living alone. He still makes too much coffee every morning, and he hasn't gone to the Chinese place down the block in months.

Brutus takes a steadying breath and then pulls out a leather journal of protective chants, rhymes, and charms he'd pulled from the bookshelf before coming here. 

Flipping through a borrowed book while sitting in the centre of a shittily-made salt triangle, that may or may not work, bleeding out as invisible dancers roam about the stage waiting for the right minute to pounce, is probably not the best idea he's ever had, but what else should he do? He can't fight back if he can't see them, and they disappear when he looks in their direction. He watches as the laughing, screaming audience starts climbing out of their seats, scrambling towards the stage.

Dark blood drips onto the book, marring part of that page's chant. He probably won't be able to return the book to the library if he gets out of this. 

Brutus sets it down for a minute to get out some of the trinkets that Kane gave him and some that he'd picked up from the flat. He sets them around the triangle, in each corner, to heighten the ward or something like that. A bright red, twisted horn pendant ahead of him, an iron tree-of-life ring to his right, a golden yin-yang pin to his left, his crucifix around his neck. Hopefully at least one of these would help him.

-Journal Entry: Cornicello-

The cornicello, cornetto, or Italian horn, is a common talisman meant to protect against the evil eye and bad luck "in general".

A useful little amulet, I was given my own a few years back by a colleague who's brother was quite the blacksmith and made them regularly for family and friends. He told me that they work best (or by some accounts, only work) when given as a gift, something I'll keep in mind for the holidays.

-

Eventually, Brutus finds one that sounds familiar. He swears Kane had used something similar to ward off two shadow spirits who kept trying to possess them, three years previous. This is a similar scenario, save that there are too many shadow people to count, and he is not Lucifer Kane. 

The summary said it was supposed to grant you time and stability to deal with the spirits without angering them and, at this point, he doesn't have a better idea. 

He scans the page for where to start and sees some of the dancers come back into his peripheral. They have given up on the dance, and instead are creeping forward towards the square. Claws ready.

So he chants. 

Brutus gets almost halfway down the page before he mispronounces the Latin word for balance so bad it sounds like strategy so, he does it again and again, and he hears the laughter of the audience rise with his frustration, he wants to scream or yell, but he just focuses on chanting.

And then the voices. 

The loud, sing-song words that have been dwelling in the back of his mind since he entered the godforsaken hallway are finally audible enough to reach his ears. 

As if the words were made for the stage.

_"The Shaman was too late! Oh, the poor Rock will die again because the Shaman was too late!"_

The theatre reverberates it back to him, to him, to him, until it's all he can hear, can hear, can hear.

-

The client he was working for was a kindly, older gentleman of dark skin and a warm smile. 

He was an inspector of abandoned buildings to see if they were a fire hazard to the surrounding area. 

Something he had done for over three decades, yet each time he'd gone into this building, he'd come out with something missing. 

The first time it was his toolbox. Weird, but not unusual to forget. But when he went in the second, he not only couldn't find his toolbox, but the image of his mother's face was struck from his memories. 

The third? He hadn't gotten past the first room before he'd forgotten his daughter's name.

That was where Brutus should have known that it was beyond him. He should have known. 

Luce would have known. 

All at once, Brutus feels cold, and he knows, he _knows_ they were playing with him. The whole damned time. The relief feels foolish, the regret feels painful, and the cold? The cold makes him tired. So, so, so, so tired.

\--

Rain speckles Lucifer Kane's coat as he runs to the abandoned complex on Straudforde Way. His footsteps reverberate down the alley and then into the building as he charges in. 

Kane feels nausea hit him as he enters the building. Things shift and move under his feet, and he thinks to himself with intense clarity, that he does not want to do this. He actually would rather do anything else _but_ this. 

But he must, for Brutus. 

So he goes to the hallway that aches of a place from somewhere else. With practised calm, Kane grabs four polished stones, citrine and sardonyx, quartz and coal, and rests them in front of the door. Kane closes his eyes and walks into the abandoned door, the entryway to the devil's home, a key to the very things that haunt your every dream and nightmare. 

Kane doesn't need to look to know the doorway is gone.

-

It takes him time to get through the tunnel, but he's through it quicker than most. He hopes it's enough.

When he feels the click of his heels on fine wood instead of a two-decade-old carpet, he opens his eyes.

A stage desecrated in shadow. In blood. In memories and fragments.

Lucifer Kane is on this stage, and in front of him is a dizzying number of seats, rows upon rows, upon rows of them. He can see figures, pairs of shadow creatures quickly swirling around the stage. Gracefully. Ominously.

He steps forward and can see in the centre of this brilliant stage is a clumsily made, black salt triangle, and in the middle of that triangle is his friend, his partner, his Brutus. 

Unconscious and surrounded by hundreds of _things_.

But when he looks at these dancers, and these creatures gathering on the edge of the stage, they disappear. Shadow creatures. One of the most ambiguous types of unnatural creature, besides ghosts. They could be a million different things, from a hundred different cultures.

Things that he didn't have _time_ to research or plan for. _Fantastic_.

Kane scrambles over to his partner, tossing small handfuls of powered peridot at the scratching, screaming shadows that now surrounding them both. 

The nearest figures recoil, scream and disappear as it hits their forms, leaving olivine dust in the air, temporarily warding off the hundreds of shadows lurking in his peripheral vision.

Kane rests for a moment, next to Brutus who is now bleeding from too many places to count. 

He looks around and spots his old journal over by a cornicello pendant, surrounded by a circle of shadow people angrily trying to grab at the book, but each time one of them lunges for it, they withdraw, seemingly burnt by the trinket's proximity. 

They disappear as he looks over, and he grabs the journal quickly. Near it, he finds a simple, golden, taijitu pin he gave Brutus some years ago and puts it in his pocket. 

Kane hears the claws of the shadowed audience scraping against the stage and scans his journal for the right solution. He finds one that might work, so he, with a shaking voice, starts reading because they are surrounded by so many creatures, these remains of people, that he can't do anything but try. 

He reads, louder and louder until his voice overtakes their screams and their laughter.

He reads until they seem alone, and then keeps on reading until the lights dim, and then reads until his voice hurts, and he is sure they are alone.

Too late. Kane was always too late. Too late to reveal his plans, too late to convince, too late to save.

Always too late. 

He's crying. It's not unwarranted.

But the Rock does not stir. 

And the Shaman knows what he must do.

Lucifer Kane takes a piece of hemp rope and ties it to an iron key, and holds the rope so the key dangles perfectly straight over Brutus Feels' heart, and drops it. 

Lucifer Kane does not hear it hit the chest of Brutus Feels, because he is not there.

-

He is where Brutus is. He is where the shadow creatures wanted them to be, and damn, is that unfortunate.

Kane looks around.

Soft tendrils of a grey-lavender mist swirl around his feet and a fog of the same colour obscures most of his vision as he glances around.

"Beans," he says to no one imparticular. 

Kane sighs sharply, he is running on some strange combination of shock and adrenaline right now and feels wholly unamused at this place.

"Brutus? Brutus, it's me, it's Kane." 

No one responds. He wasn't expecting them to.

One failed dousing rod, many curses later, and he is wandering through the enveloping fog of this world without a clue of where to go. 

It would have been too easy for Brutus to be right where he had landed. And nothing has ever been easy for Lucifer Kane.

Kane hears a distant, ghostly voice as he walks forward, keeping a paranoid eye in every direction.

"She called me handsome, I think. I felt...happy for once."

Kane swivels his head around, but there's nothing to be found except swirling mists, distant shadows, and an unsettling feeling that has long since found a home in his veins.

Kane hears a child laughing. The image of a little boy, no older than five or so, twirling around with his mother, pops into Kane's head. It just as quickly fades, and he doesn't feel sorrow for them, but he knows Brutus would feel sad for them, and that has to count for something. 

They've been here before. Or somewhere similar to here. 

There are many names for such a place, the astral plane, hell, the end, pure land, or even an alternate world.

Kane believes many things about this place, but none as simple as drawing a line to a single popular belief, no this is something more...magnificent.

A world of eternal heights, of endless falling. Of loss. Of gain. 

A voice from the theatre creeps into the back of his head once again. 

"Always too late, Shaman, always too late." 

-

He swears he can hear someone calling for help from somewhere in front of him, beyond his limited field of vision. The voice echoes so loud, so clearly heard, yet fuzzy, the words indistinguishable. 

He's sure it's a trap. Only a fool would not recognize a trap that clear, yet an even bigger fool would turn in the opposite direction and flee. 

So instead, Lucifer Kane holds out his ruby necklace straight in front of him and waits for the rhythmic swinging to slow. He watches as the ruby slowly and softly drifts to the left, so Kane goes left.

-

The voices drift in and out, like a fading background track that never really goes away. 

Hints of conversations fill his ears. Some important, some cherished, and some so lost to time he can barely tell they're supposed to be words. 

He hears wedding vows, funeral rites. He hears a graduation speech, impactful and resonant.

He hears cherished conversations almost yellowed with age, some words sounding fuzzy and indistinguishable. 

An old grandmother, telling the detailed story of how she enlisted in the army in the 1920s. A sweet-voiced man, reminding his partner that he'll always love them. A child, describing the firetruck she saw on her way to school. 

If Kane focuses long enough, he can _almost_ tune out the soft stories in the background, ignoring them like the quiet tin of an audiobook pouring out of someone's earphones in a crowd.

Each one feels...wrong. Like it's told by someone who watched a movie once on the subject and is now lecturing a class on it. The memories aren't wrong in actuality, the conversations make sense for the most part, and it's not as if he knows what each memory is drawn from, but it still leaves him with this dreadful, foreboding sensation in the back of his mind.

-

After walking somewhere between one to three hours, Kane gets the slight feeling that he is walking in a circle. 

It's certainly possible, Kane isn't trying to _not_ go in a circle. He's just trying to get to...to...

Well, he's trying to get to someone.

Names don't truly matter, do they. Memories are always fading.

Every step you take, they get a little paler, a little fuzzier, less detailed. 

But it's so unoften that we feel each one leaving. Or even feel the hole in its absence.

Ordinary people get it in small bits, waking up and forgetting that dream that was so vibrant yet but a second ago. Or forgetting the colour of your childhood home. But ordinary people never feel this. 

Not the sudden feeling of forgetting your...your...partner? Does he have a partner? The word feels familiar but wrong. Like he hasn't said it out loud in a very long time. Maybe he hasn't. 

Lucifer Kane looks for his notes and instead finds a cigarette in his pocket. 

He finds a lighter in another pocket, so he lights it and inhales. 

"My...sister? Or was it my mother? Well, someone I...must have met once, stole a lighter from a shop downtown." A gravelly voice says, from just behind Kane's peripheral. 

He does not turn his head to look at the ghost, for he has no reason to. Kane has heard many ghosts before, and with each inhale of silvery smoke, he feels the world around him melt into a soft haze.

"She gave it to me on our...on our day, and laughed when I asked her where she'd gotten it, she had no job at that point." 

Kane inhales more smoke and exhales it into the almost identical swirling fog around him. He waits, but the voice says nothing more, and Kane does not feel a presence, so he walks further. 

With each new breath of smoke, distant outlines of people get a little stronger, more detailed. Through the heavy mist, he sees the trail of a wedding dress, the frame of a suit. 

He sees fragments of a quiet night in, a luxurious evening on the town, of an elegant outfit for nothing greater than errands.

Kane hears voices now, vibrant and boisterous. 

He catches an energetic retelling of a win for someone's home team. A sorrowful story of someone's late grandparents. A loving description of someone's first date. 

He feels the brisk breeze pick up with the steps of unseen people as they pass him by. His shoulder jostles with the hurried run of...well, someone darting in front of him. 

Each step is met with the feeling of his boots meeting a cobblestoned path, endless and infinite, and Kane's head spins at the scale of the road ahead of him.

Thousands of cobblestones in every direction, dense fog swirling to obscure even a few feet in front of him.

Kane takes a final breath from his cigarette and continues forward.

-

At one point a dog joins him. Unlike the shadows of long-dead people, he can see it. A mutt, seemingly made of the same silvery mists that encircle them both.

She walks confidently, so Kane follows. Shadow people pass by in a haze, but they don't seem to notice him. 

Kane wonders if it's because she belongs in this place. 

He wonders if he belongs in this place. 

He wonders if the person he's searching for belongs in this place. 

The dog brings Kane to an area where the mists have died down a bit, and Kane inhales sharply. His cigarette burnt out what feels like hours ago, and he considers lighting another. 

She nudges his hand, and it feels like moving through thick steam, except more consolidated. 

The mutt turns and walks away, and Lucifer Kane gets a distinct impression that he is not to follow. 

As her tail disappears into the fog, he remembers that he was trying to recall something before the mists took that too. 

Kane's hands find his journal before he thinks to search for it. He sits on the ground, lights three white candles in a triangle around him, and flips through the journal.

He spends too long on it. Too long, but it's worth it. "As always, Brutus Feels' ability to punch demons is much appreciated-" 

Brutus Feels. That sounds right. 

Lucifer Kane slams the old journal shut, blows out the candles and continues walking. 

-

He eventually hears footsteps join him, and he resists the urge to look, to study, and write down. To fight or banish. 

But he won't make that mistake again, so he continues walking, a man of false confidence and useless knowledge.

"Damned int'restin to see someone like you 'round 'ere." A voice of another world speaks from behind his shoulder. Kane does not look back, and he just keeps walking.

"I'm sure it is," Lucifer Kane says, but his voice sounds wrong. It doesn't sound like his voice, all pitchy and sharp. Or maybe his voice has always sounded like that, would he know?

"Who are ya lookin' for? I might know 'em." The voice asks, still walking with mirrored stride next to him, just barely visible in his periphery. 

Kane's boots echo on the cold, grey cobblestones, and their footsteps echo similarly, just half a second off. 

If he focuses on the ground beneath him, he can see a silhouette of boots on the side of his vision, but they disappear when he adjusts his eyes to look at them.

"I doubt you could help," Kane responds, feeling his mind grow tense and unsure at the question the longer he thinks about it.

He hears a soft chuckle and the footsteps lead away.

Kane glances at the figure, walking away, but they disappear just like most things in this hellscape. 

Kane sighs.

-

One of the many things his mind dwells upon in this long, long walk is that Lucifer Kane misses home. 

His home. Their home. 

It's been too long since he's slept in his own bed, or woken up to fresh coffee being made in the kitchen. He misses living with another person. 

And while he knows this, he doesn't know it just the same. It is a stupid premise and an even more ludicrous thought, but it's true.

Something about this place makes every claim, every statement ever so slightly incorrect, and, with each perceived memory, he can't help but notice the feeling of each one being wrong or mistaken.

Kane hates this place as much as he's intrigued by it. How many memories are stolen by this plane, by these creatures? What secrets could he find answers to? 

-

As the day progresses, the silvered fog lays low, allowing Kane to see what has been on the edges of his vision all along.

People.

Every time he looks at one, they disappear, but he can see the shape of a Victorian dress, a postal worker's hat, or a pair of sunglasses.

Occasionally they pass by his shoulder, and he can hear them, chatting softly, repeating one-sided conversations they must have had a long, long time ago. 

Pairs of figures walk by him, both sets of speech worn down to be mostly unrecognizable.

A lean figure walks next to him now, a cane clicking alongside their pace. Their soft voice becomes a little louder so Kane can ( _unfortunately_ ) hear what they are saying.

"I swear the boat never stopped! It just floated on and on forever, I mean, I stayed at the docks all throughout the night, and, it was only at dawn that I finally couldn't see it anymore."

"Why did you watch it, though? You knew how it'd end," A new voice asks from the left side of Kane. 

The figure with the click of their cane accentuating their words replies, "My...mother? Or maybe my grandmother? Well, someone said it was bad luck to look away from a boat as it leaves, and it was important that it left safely."

Kane clutches a string of red jasper beads to his chest like an old woman with her pearls. 

It took everything in his person to not look at these spectres. But looking at them would only make them leave his visual, not truly go away, and if he had learned anything, _knowing_ where the spectres are, is much more useful than the pretence of safety.

The figure to his left sighs a little. 

"Why was it important, though?"

"I don't remember."

Kane hears both sets of footsteps head to his right, and after a couple of seconds, all he can hear is the resounding 'click' of a cane fading into darkness.

-

Regardless of how hard he tries, at some points, the voices get too loud to tune out, the visions too vibrant to ignore.

He hears a young man laugh as he explains the rules of poker to another. 

"No darlin' it's about the _bettin',_ not the cards themselves. Take away the bettin' and you ain't doin' much of anythin' at all."

His vision amplifies, in a way. He can see a confused looking man with a smile, just the same as he can see the haze that swirls around his feet with each step he takes forward, each step bringing him closer to Brutus.

Lucifer Kane sees through a man once named Gwennalt Penry, who is dealing a hand of cards to his partner. 

The man across from Gwennalt, from Lucifer, is laughing at something, at some joke that was too faded for him to hear. 

He too draws a hand and glances at it. Lucifer Kane has never played poker, but Gwennalt Penry has, meaning that Kane has a massive headache and simultaneously knows what the hand means, and, yet he doesn't and never has. 

The sweet man hesitantly reveals his hand, and Gwennalt and Lucifer smile because that man just won the round. The other man leans over and kisses him on the cheek, and he is happy.

The memory fades, and Kane feels so nauseated, he might throw up. The overlapping sight, the reality of two existences at once...it was too much. 

This all was too much. Kane was made to handle conflict of mind and reality, he was trained, no, experienced in these types of matters.

Lucifer Kane sits on the ground and mutters a string of curses in a language he doesn't fully remember the name of as he pulls out a stick of incense.

The mist clings to his hands and to the incense, making it much harder than needed to light the damned thing.

Eventually, the end lights into flames and he counts to fifteen before blowing it out, leaving a soft orange glow and tendrils of heavily scented smoke in its wake.

Kane holds a cord with forty knots, a witch's ladder, over the smoke and unties the first knot. A soft wind drifts over the region, the clouds gently blown away, and Kane's head clears, if only for a minute. 

What the hell is he doing here? 

Every second he spends here he loses another memory, including whom he is searching for and where he needs to go. He has spent half of his time just meandering and hearkening to people come and go and wishing he didn't have to do this.

It'd be different if he was researching, fighting, taking notes or exploring, but he's not. He's searching for a single man who is on the bordering edge of death and life, whom Kane desperately needs to stay alive. 

Lucifer Kane sighs, and he pulls out a solid iron key. It's not hard to leave, and he could come straight back as soon as he had any sense of preparation. 

It'd be too late though, it's always too late. 

So, Kane puts the key back into his pocket, and clambers back to standing, his knees throbbing with pain from the amount of walking he's done. 

A deep breath leaves his lungs, and he wonders if another cigarette would be a good idea. It had made the stories, the voices, the people, louder and brighter, so probably not. Probably not.

-

Kane does not keep wandering this time. 

No, this time he listens carefully. He follows simple charms, simple rituals and listens.

He was never good at navigating. 

Truly, one of the places Brutus has always excelled is being _marginally_ better at finding the place they needed to go (even if it took a lot of trial and error). But Kane was skilled at this. At this place, these creatures, this world. He knows a dozen names for the fog he walks through, and if Brutus were next to him, he'd recite them all. 

So when he hears a voice he remembers, he is entirely unsure, if it's a good or bad thing.

-

They once had a client who felt like her world was shrinking every day. That every building was becoming smaller, the subway contracting, her car shrivelling until it was smaller than she could get in to. She felt that it would eventually close in on her, entombing her in matter, wherever she got caught.

Kane was almost positive that she just needed psychiatric help, but Brutus thought she needed someone to listen to her story, regardless. 

Full of care, that one. 

But it very quickly hit a point when it was quite obvious they were dealing with something grave, very grave indeed. 

So they accepted her case because, of course, they did. Almost a full month of research went by before they got a lead. 

A proprietor of "magical artefacts" in the US had sent them an old book on logged paranormal cases, and one had matched almost perfectly to how their client had described. A complicated but manageable ritual later and the ghoul was trapped in a plastic water bottle, inside of a large glass case in their apartment. All had been fine, she'd paid them handsomely and continued on fine. Alive and in the true world as she should be.

Yet, somehow, her voice was telling him something.

"You should leave Mr Kane." 

His skin prickled in frustration and mild (very mild) horror.

"How did you find me?" 

He feels incredibly irritated, mostly because he does not like interacting with clients outside of cases, _especially_ not when considering his evidence, it looks like they had failed!

"A frie- no...someone here told me you were here, so I needed to come to say hi for some bloody reason," she laughs incredulously after she says this phrase.

"Well, you've said hi." 

Kane does not look at his old client. He just stares forward as they walk, ignoring the shape in his peripheral.

"I know you are looking for Brutus. How much do you remember of him? How will you find his spirit if you've forgotten its shape?" 

She sounds tired and frustrated, her words have so much emotion shoved into them.

He sees a vibrant, blurry vision of two teenagers, one identical to the client she once was, walking hand in hand down an abandoned road, laughing and eating ice cream. 

Kane doesn't reply and instead, just clutches a golden taijitu pin in his hand. 

She sighs, and they keep walking. Barely changing fog rolls on and on and on in front of them, and it's no wonder Kane's mind couldn't think straight when he first entered.

"I can't persuade you to leave, but I can give you something to help out. Could you close your eyes for a second?" She asks, and Kane feels a rush of fear at the prospect.

But, he does it anyway, and when the Kane he used to be asks him what he thinks he's doing, he doesn't have an answer. He hasn't had an answer for a while.

Kane holds out his hands, and a cold metallic object is placed into them. Kane opens his eyes, and she is not there. 

He doesn't remember her name, or her face, or even how her case ended. Lucifer Kane walks away and forgets she existed. 

-

In his hands is a simple compass. Made of gold, the needle pointing him forward. It doesn't have directions labelled on it and has only one needle. 

He follows it for a while until he realizes that the ground he is walking upon is no longer cobblestones and is instead lush grass, lilacs, and daffodils of strange which colours lay in front of him on rolling hills. 

His head swims, and a memory comes to the front of his mind, and in this haze, he can't remember if it is his memory or someone else's.

A memory of a nursery, walking throughout the rows and rows of plants. Flowers give the air a sweet earthy smell, and the heat makes him uncomfortable in his long, black coat. 

A short woman of fiery red hair and tanned skin directs him to a row of hanging, green pots with many types of dangling, leafy plants in them. She tells him about each one.

"Pothos, devil's ivy, now some places keep labellin' their's as philodendron, but usually it's not. Pothos is called devil's ivy because it's really damned hard to kill, definitely a good choice if you are gone on 'cases' a whole bunch."

She continues, and Kane just sits on the ground and listens, his eyes closed. His hands find the rich, damp dirt, and he digs down into it until his hands are thoroughly submerged.

"Spider plant. Nifty little thing, it's offshoots look like little spiders. Easy to take care of and according to my grandmother, invites spiders into your home. Definitely, hullabaloo if you hate spiders."

He opens the door with arms full of pots and places them around the flat in a frenzy. Kane carefully tapes papers of instructions onto each planter, a recommendation from the woman.

Brutus, or a man so like Brutus it's uncanny, enters the home, exhausted, and Kane feels a bit bad for him, likely the trip had been in vain.

His mouth or his brain, or this person speaks and tells Brutus something. Laughter. A genuine answer. 

"So you spent the day just buying plants?" This Brutus asks, a soft smile on his face as he leans over to inspect the spider plant. "I think my mother had one of these when I was a kid."

He responds, information and words bubbling up before he can control them. 

"Yes! Well, I read a fascinating book by that haunted composer I was telling you about last week, and, she recommends having plants around the house to gauge temperature differences, and what kind of ecological pressure is in our air without us knowing it. It's probably bu..." 

The vision fades, as Brutus stands to make coffee, and Kane finds himself back in the field, the prairie of mist-wreathed flowers.

He keeps his hands buried in the dirt for a while, as he clears his mind of all thought, of all emotion. The visions and voices fade as he focuses on the man he needs to find. Brutus Feels. 

A man is associated with that name, and he thinks of the face, of the voice and personality of that name. Brutus Feels. He thinks of a shitty leather jacket, forever abandoned in Scotland. He thinks of exasperated laughter at Brutus' encounter with the fae. He thinks of Chinese food and cases. He thinks of Brutus falling to the ground. He thinks of the panic and holds it in his heart until he can't stand it. Brutus Feels.

Lucifer Kane rises, hands covered in dirt with the memory, the being, the person, Brutus Feels clear in his head. He must find this man, this soul, and bring him _home,_ out of this place.

He follows the compass.

-

The shadow people do not follow him here, instead, they have been left far behind on the labyrinth of indistinguishable length. 

The voices and visions have stayed behind as well. Mostly.

Instead, he is joined by more mist-made figures. These, like the dog, don't disappear when he looks at them. 

Kane studies these figures. 

Some are in fine detail, and look like an old photograph, ever so slightly out of focus. Some are so hazy you can barely tell they are a person. But most are in the middle, defined, but not enough to be able to recognize them. 

Often these figures have a few specific features in much finer detail than the rest of them, like a sharp jawline, a dark hat, or a sweet smile.

He's startled out of his musings by the sound of echoed footsteps as one of the sharper mist-covered people approaches him from behind.

Next to him walks a handsome young man, with a sharp collared shirt, and a professional smile. Both hands are folded behind him, a lorgnette in one of them. The young man extends his empty hand as if motioning to the rolling hills covered in flowers in front of them.

"I just love the outdoors, and it is the perfect place to study for true notetaking. No other place than a marketside has so many distractions available for you to hone your skill with."

Kane glances around for any other figures, but he sees none besides the one next to him.

"Can you hear me?" Kane asks. The figure doesn't make any movements besides keeping a steady pace next to Kane. 

Kane realizes with mild embarrassment that this man looks awful similar to how he looked at a lecturer. He even has a pair of lorgnettes at home.

"As this night's assignment, I expect a full page worth of proper notation. The setting? Outside. Describe the birds chirping and what tone and inflexion you hear. Dismissed, I will be here to answer any questions until four." 

The man enveloped in the light lavender mist then nods once in Kane's direction and leaves.

-

Kane walks for a while, distant figures occasionally wave at him, and he can hear laughter and talking being carried along with the breeze.

He makes his way down a lilac covered hill and notices two figures at the bottom. He studies them as he walks slowly in their direction.

Two young ladies in a twirling dance, both with long sundresses, previously braided hair falling loose, and shoes abandoned. Both figures are mist-made and slightly fuzzy at the edges. He hears words, drawn-out, that sound almost like hissed whispers. 

They finish their haphazard dance and collapse joyfully onto the ground, a faint shadow of a blanket lies underneath them, and a haze that looks similar to a picnic basket lies at their side. 

They talk more plainly now, and Kane can't help but notice how many words are indescribable mangled nonsense, or so faint they are hardly spoken at all.

He catches words as he passes by their blanket, talk of running away, sailing, just the two of them to New Amsterdam. Starting anew. 

They don't react to him in the slightest and he keeps following the compass' lead through the knee-high flowers and weeds.

Kane starts walking up the next hill and glances backwards when he can't hear their voices anymore and is surprised to still see two mist-wreathed figures laughing over an undefined picnic.

-

Lucifer Kane walks solemnly across the quiet meadow, and can't help but notice the beautiful landscape around him. 

A bright grey sky, made of billowing clouds, lies overhead. Long rolling hills lie in every direction, covered in long grass, wildflower, milkweed and every manner of plant, some long since extinct. Colours exist in these verdant hills, though muted, tinted with that grey-lavender hue. 

There's a rough dirt path that his compass follows now, fields of wheat occasionally pop up to his left or right. 

A gentle fog still covers the region, his view greatly diminished. 

In the farthermost regions of his vision, he can see the occasional misty figure walking faster than he, or an animal darting across the path. 

He stops for a second and turns around, looking at the edges of the mist that always seems to loom closer than it should.

Kane realizes he can hear the far-off clopping of horse hooves, and in the distance he can see a large horse and rider, in full bridle and saddle gear, trotting out of the mists. 

It only takes the horse and rider a minute or so to catch up to him. The horse slows to match his leisurely walking pace.

A tall figure leans down from the top of the horse and shouts, "The war is won! Have you heard people? The time to rejoice is nigh, for our soldiers have won the war!"

The rider nudges the horse into a fast pace, leaving Kane far behind rather quickly. A sigh leaves him as he too picks up pace. His knees became numb within the first few hours of walking on hard cobblestones, and he can barely feel any part of his legs at this point.

-

As Kane walks along this path, keeping an eye out for anything new or different about the sylvan hills, his compass starts changing direction, slowly pointing him off the dirt path. 

He follows it, and it's not long before he's treading through a field of slightly grey wheat, rising up to his hip as he pushes through.

Rough ground gravels underneath his boots as he makes his way through the wheat, squinting as it whips him in the face. The soft smell of rich dirt and golden grain fills his lungs, and he relishes the change from the musty smell of the cobblestoned tract.

Kane travels on this way for what feels like hours, though he doesn't stop to pause or rest. He just keeps moving.

He feels the haze creep into the back recesses of his mind when he loses focus, and at one point forgets why he's holding a compass, causing him to sit down with a stick of incense and a frustrated curse.

As Kane walks, he slowly sees...something, tall and winding in the distance, shadowed by heavy fog, that slowly gets thinner as he advances.

It winds up, and, up, and, up, and he swears he sees a portion of it peaking out of the fog, but when he goes to look at it, it's just as obscured as the rest.

He has no sense of time as he makes his way through wheat fields, pushing through golden grain and walking on untrodden ground. The occasional voice or laugh carries along with the wind, and he can't help but stop and look around, but no other figures make their way out of the fog.

-

Lucifer Kane walks now, treading through mushy fields, with wheat bent in half, his boots sticking slightly to the ground with each step.

A growl, low and guttural, makes him freeze in place. He sees to his left, a gigantic hulking mass of bones, and flesh, and shadow.

A creature, so unlike anything he has seen before in his life, gives way to an unexplainable nature. 

It has too many, yet not enough limbs. Its mouth is too big for its body, with so many teeth it seems improbable. An indistinguishable, dark liquid drips from its growling maw, and bones jut out from its skin in odd angles.

Kane does three things at the same time. 

The first of these three things is taking a single step forward. His boots lurch on the mud underneath and the creature stares him down as he faces it.

The second thing is chanting arbitrary words into the damp air around them. It's not any particular chant, more a combination of words put together to emphasize power and energy.

The third and final thing he does is funnelling power and energy _into_ these words, and throwing it as hard as he can at the being of this beast.

In response to these three things, the creature ducks it's head and exclaims a sore, mournful screech. After a moment it raises it's head and goes to charge forward, but Lucifer Kane is quicker.

He chucks an iron bead straight at it's bubbling, oil-slick head and marvels as it bursts into flame. 

Kane stares it straight in the eyes and watches as it screeches again and slowly melts into a mixture of oil and black blood, which leaks onto the ground, slowly collecting in the leftover footprints in the mud. 

As Kane backs up to prevent the gooey blood from oozing onto his boots, he reminisces about how good he is at fighting in this curious little world.

Then, he walks away, leaving the beast to shriek itself into liquid. 

-

He eventually comes to a clearing. 

A pleasant change from the mud-filled and foggy wheat fields he pushed through, this clearing seems to be a huge circle of imperceivable size. And, in what he can only guess is the centre, miles upon miles away, is what was hidden from him as he made his way through the fields.

An immense willow tree, much larger than any structure he's ever seen in his life. He glances up and sees, hanging far, far overhead is long strands of leaves, the silhouette making the entire clearing dark and ghostly looking. The entire clearing is under the cover of the giant tree, shadows shifting and moving with the light shining through the branches.

Its massive trunk lies in the centre of this clearing and rises so far up, he can barely see the top, and the branches reach to the outer edge of the miles-wide clearing. 

A deep valley cuts the path to the tree in half, the hill before it marring his view of what lies beyond.

He squints, and in the distance, he can see tiny figures, walking, running, hell, he even sees a few skipping, towards the tree. 

Kane turns his gaze upwards and sees in the far, far distance, people walking along the branches, parallel to the ground, upside down and across from gravity.

They walk, skip, run and dance along this tree to places unknown, and Lucifer Kane knows he must join them if he wants to find Brutus.

With renewed will and end in sight, he starts his long trek to the base of the tree.

-

Kane notices as he walks that the fog stays to the outside of the clearing. A wall of grey haze swirls up the invisible line that separates the clearing from the wheat fields that surround it. 

He only gets a mile or so into his trek before he is interrupted once again.

A misty silhouette of a child startles Kane as they twirl around and around him, laughing. The kid has no discernable features, just a silhouette, wreathed in mist, their laughs seem strange and drawn out. 

A peculiar sound, that must have once been talking echoes around the space and Kane covers his ears.

Children were messy and loud, and he can't decide if ghost children or alive children were worse. At least, ghost children, he could vanquish or put to rest. But some ghost children wanted to eat his soul, so really it's half and half.

This child finally stops their shrill sounds and continues spinning around and around Kane. He watches them, but quickly gets dizzy and focuses on walking again.

The kid accompanies him for what must be twenty minutes or longer and keeps spinning around him the entire time, like a wobbly planetary cycle.

Finally, ( _finally_ ) the mist-silhouette of a child stops spinning and seems to fall on the ground playfully, and starts making that terrifying, cold laugh again. 

Kane picks up his pace and desperately hopes he can outpace this horrible, spinning, misty child.

-

Kane passes over the hill and sees what was hidden from him before. Slowly rising out of the ground are huge roots, twisting in complicated tangles.

Further on, it devolves into a terrifying bramble of roots, the other side not visible, and he can only hope it's not shielding something worse.

In the first section, he gets through relatively easily, ducking, half-jumping and awkwardly climbing around them. A few provide a small struggle, but he's not so entirely out of shape as to be stuck lumbering over roots.

It's somewhere through this odd terrain that he spots the dog again. 

She's sitting on one of the exposed roots, cocking her head curiously as he passes underneath her perch, almost as if she didn't expect him to get this far.

Kane keeps an eye on her as she follows alongside him, climbing up the various roots to sit and watch for a moment before jumping down to follow. 

At one point he watches her sprint ahead, grey dirt kicked up into the air by her running. A grey-lavender mist is following her heels, and her legs are a haze with how fast she's running. 

Her sprinting slows down to a gentle trot, and eventually, she just sits down and silently waits for him to catch up. He follows, his boots kicking up dust as he makes his way to her.

They navigate this section with minimal problems, besides Kane's knees throbbing in pain with every jump. 

Eventually, the slightly frustrating terrain makes way to a huge labyrinth made of roots and plant matter, with ten-foot walls, and sharpened points sticking out from each wall. 

This part involves less ducking and more trying to memorize the complicated layout to find out how to go further. He keeps swearing they haven't gone to the right, to only discover they've definitely been to the right. 

Some parts they get half an hour into before realizing it's a dead end, causing him to backtrack, cursing all the while. The struggle only makes him more focused on solving this maze, and several hours and cigarettes go into the labyrinth before they make it to the worst part of this nightmare valley.

The labyrinth makes way to a sharp, dangerous bramble, an inscrutable tangle of roots, forcing him to actually climb and jump from section to section. It would surprise no one for him to say, _this isn't his strong suit._

The dog, apparently familiar with the bramble, often watched from the tops, though seemingly took pity every once in a while, when he'd get stuck, and would show him an easier way up, to his chagrin. 

Climbing, jumping, (falling), and crawling up roots for several hours is not his idea of a good time, and the hundreds of splinters leave his arms in a piercing array of pain. He makes it to the final clump of roots and almost collapses in relief.

Now, he is sitting on a fifteen-foot tall root, trying to pet a mostly-mist dog who is sitting next to him.

Soft rays of golden light peak through the distant wall of grey fog, making the entire place glow softly. Clouds still roll overhead, the light making them look soft and fluffy.

Kane stares up at the tree, hundreds upon hundreds of miles tall. It seems illogical, and he can feel a Kane from many, many years ago wanting to force it into a perspective that makes sense. 

But, too much time, weed, and practice had gone into this line of work for him to abandon the mystical nonsense of the world now. 

Giant leaves sway slowly in the wind, the golden light silhouetting the long streams dangling down from the tree's branches. 

Now that he takes a moment, he relishes how absolutely beautiful the region is. A tired, sad part of him thinks of many moments like this, of sunsets and picturesque views, but instead of a strange, cold dog sitting next to him, a large warm man with a sweet laugh and a penchant for ugly jackets would take that place.

Kane gets up to his feet, carefully (he had already fallen too many times to _not_ be careful), and starts looking for the best way down. 

The roots go back underground after this point, leaving an empty, blessedly easy trek up the other side of the valley. From this vantage point, he can see a relatively simple way down to the ground and starts climbing, step after careful step. 

As Kane clambers down, he realizes he is getting close to being done with this place. With this world. If he can do this right and succeed, he and Brutus will be home soon. A spark of pain from his leg shakes him from his ever-so-slightly hopeful thoughts. His knees were going to be _ruined_ after this.

As he plants both feet on the ground, Kane notices the dog isn't by his side anymore and sees she is still sitting on the root perch, silently observing him. He watches as she slowly gets up and starts walking back the way they just came. 

-

Kane absentmindedly checks the compass one last time, and he finds it still pointing him in the direction of the tree. As he puts it back in his pocket, he wonders if it'll come back home with him. Would be an interesting momento.

Shadow figures walk in the corners of his vision towards the tree. The mist figures do as well, but with no real urgency, as if everything were as right as rain. 

Kane allows himself curiosity and studies these figures, experiments with how close he has to look to the shadowed ones before they disappear. 

He finds he can look as closely as he wants, but he just can't actively look at any part of them. Something to consider when he isn't exhausted beyond relief.

All of a sudden Kane gets to the top of the hill and realizes he is much nearer to the tree than he thought. 

As if on instinct, he steps closer and closer to the trunk, marvelling at the sheer size of it. It consumes the entirety of his vision now, and he can't help but be fascinated by it. 

He puts a hesitant hand on the bark and finds it strangely warm, like freshly baked bread or the feeling when coffee is made just the way you like without you even having to ask. 

Isometric patterns in the bark seem to constantly shift as he watches it, spiralling uniformly up, towards the long, long branches that house millions of leaves.

Kane watches out of the corner of his vision as a shadowy form approaches the tree and walks as if to intersect with it but effortlessly continues walking, up and up the trunk, falling into almost a sprint as they defy gravity.

Dull pain ebbs at his temples, and Kane is hit with a wave of exhaustion. It's a miracle he's still standing, and he puts an arm against the bark to lean most of his weight against it. His legs have been swinging from completely numb to outstandingly hot, and now they've settled in a horrifying median. 

"Need a hand?" An amused voice asks.

Kane startles out of his state and glances around, the corner of his sight drawn to a shadow leaning against the lowest branch, that shoots out so far into the distance he couldn't definitively say if it ever ended or not. 

He doesn't look at them straight on, and instead keeps a majority of his vision trained on the branch instead of the figure.

"I don't even know what I need help with," he replies truthfully.

"Well, I could always quite literally give you a hand, though I don't know how well that'd work."

The figure extends their arms, cloaked in shadow, and even in his peripheral he can see the mess of shadow and darkness that encompasses all of the figure, and if hands were once visible on them, they haven't been for a very, very long time.

"That's fine, instead could you explain how to get up this tree?"

"Just... _walk up it_. It's genuinely that simple." 

Kane's fatigued mind can't even dredge up the energy to be exasperated, so he tries to walk up the tree. Surprisingly, it still doesn't do anything.

"No, you have to think about _where_ on the tree you need to go, it'll lead you to it, but if you don't have that branch or place in mind, you are just staring at a rather big tree."

Where was he trying to go? 

While in the clearing his mind had forced past the memory stealing haze of the previous sections, but it now gave way to natural brain fog by way of exhaustion.

Kane was trying to get to his partner, Brutus Feels. He thinks again of Brutus, and of all the little moments that make up his image of the man, all the kind actions, all the cases, and tries to walk on the tree. 

As Kane's foot touches the bark, his gravity suddenly shifts, his knees buckling as a wave of nausea hits his mind. He stumbles forward and realizes he is standing on the bark. Parallel to the ground. 

Kane hears clapping and looks up to see the quick form of a black haze in front of him before they disappear. 

He would be awfully freaked out by the sight but he has experienced a whole damned lot this...day? Has it been a week? Weeks?

Time doesn't exist in this place, but his best guess would have him suppose it's been days he's spent wandering the endless expanse of this world.

The shadow figure doesn't come back, and Kane considers looking around for them before remembering that, oh right! He doesn't give a shit! 

-

The bark seems to shift and move under his feet as if he's standing on a moving river, and the nausea doesn't seem to leave him. Each step seems strangely longer but also shorter than it should be, likely due to the aide of the shifting bark, but possibly because of the sheer height of how high he's walking up this tree. 

Kane, eventually, gets used to the odd feeling of walking up a tree and before long his mind is back to wandering over these people and figures. 

He can't decide if he is more curious about them or frightened. Maybe a healthy combination of the two?

Regardless, shadowy hazes seem to respond as if they were once people, trapped into telling old memories over and over again. But the mist figures don't seem to make _any_ new dialogue or respond as if they are a real person. Personified memories? Scenes brought to this world as if they are happening in real-time?

Have the shadow people just been trapped here for too long? Shadow figures have a long history of showing up in paranormal records, but they don't have any inherent mythological cause, though some people point to Djinn or trickster spirits. So _why_ do they turn into odd shadowy hazes?

He muses for a while, and once he is fairly sure he can't fall off the tree as he's walking, he pulls out a journal to keep track of his ideas about this place. It's odd to have fresh ink added to a journal he hasn't touched in far, far too long, like he's righting one of many wrongs he's made.

As Lucifer Kane walks, the bark underneath his feet seems to lead him along the trunk, to a branch that spirals out, drifting further and further down, out of sight.

He passes by the occasional figure, mist and shadow, to and from the branch he is on, but the branches are large enough that three or four people could walk side by side, so it's no problem to cooly step to the side, out of their reach.

Kane sticks to walking straight along the branch as if obeying the laws of something so simple as gravity in this strange place will get him brownie points. It also makes him not want to throw up, so there's that.

The sight is beautiful, and keeps his mind off of the deep dread he gets from this place, and the bubbling tiredness, threatening to drag him down by tooth and nail to make him sleep.

He's high enough up that the leaves block a fair amount of the skyline, but his eyes are focused down, on the land surrounding the tree. He sees in the distance, the valley that contains the mess of roots, the hill before and beyond it, numerous figures making their way to the trunk he is walking away from.

Kane looks to another branch and sees, sitting contentedly, the dog, alongside the black haze who offered him a hand, both watching him slowly walk towards where this branch will lead to. Right before he directs his vision back towards his goal, he sees the black figure wave, and he waves back. 

-

Kane comes across the first doorframe about an hour into his walk. He follows the main limb he was lead on, ignoring the places where it branches off, and focusing on his path forward. 

He notices it from far away, a little offshoot containing a spiralled disk made of branch. 

As he gets closer he sees the beautifully intricate doorframe, with a swirling door of white plasma contained within. 

He stops walking and steps onto the platform, studying the doorframe and the pulling sensation in his chest, telling him "Not here Lucifer Kane, not here."

Kane watches as a soft mess of shadow, barely even a figure, runs down the branch and into the portal, which ripples, spirling out, ending against the doorframe. 

He returns to his walk along the branch. 

Kane reaches the end of the branch he had been set upon and sees a similar, but much larger disk that the end of the branch has spiralled in to. 

A similarly elaborate doorframe lies ahead of him, and he steps onto the disk. A sigh of relief leaves him as the nausea of moving so high up ebbs from his mind.

Brutus does not stand on the circle of branch with him, and disappointment still strikes his heart, despite his resistance. 

The portal has to lead him to where Brutus is, right?

His weary bones ache at the idea of more walking and climbing. His coat has many tears in it, and he hopes it'll transfer back to whole when he leaves this place.

Kane sighs, and on a whim, pulls out the compass. Surprisingly, it now points to the portal, and what other choice does he have? (He has many other choices, but who has time to consider them at this point? Certainly not Lucifer Kane.)

So, he takes a deep breath and enters the portal, feeling a cold breeze wash over his skin. 

-

Kane is standing on a cliff, overseeing a hazy ocean with a soft lavender-grey sky. Distant golden light shines through the clouds, and the smell of salt and a gust of warm breeze puts him at ease. 

Brutus is sitting at the edge, legs dangling over a fifty-foot cliff, only a small shift away from falling into the deep, tranquil sea below. He looks calm, distant, and tired. Dark circles ring his eyes, and his shoulders are tight, revealing anxiety.

Kane walks forward and sits down, exhausted, at the edge. His shoulder presses into Brutus' and relief courses through him. 

"Brutus?"

A beat of silence turns into a second, and that second turns into a minute. 

"Can we go home, Luce?" Brutus continues staring at the rolling ocean waves, his voice brittle and hoarse from disuse.

"Yes Brute, I think that's an excellent idea." 

Neither of them move.

Kane probably looks crazed, because he's been walking for what feels like hundreds of hours, has heard voices telling him about a million different stories, none of which matter, he's forgotten his, his partner's, and his grandmother's name about a billion times, _and_ he's on the bordering edge of just going to sleep here and probably never waking up. 

But, Brutus is next to him, which means he succeeded. They get to go home, together. 

After several minutes of just listening to the crash of the waves, Kane finally reaches out and takes Brutus' hand softly in his own. Cold, calloused hands accept warm, splintered ones in their grasp.

With his other hand, he pulls out an iron key and tosses it into the waves. They watch, together, as the key falls and falls and falls. Neither of them hear it hit the water.

\--Epilogue--

When Brutus Feels wakes up, this time in an abandoned theatre full of dusty, stained, and dilapidated velvet-red seats, Lucifer Kane is sitting next to him, tears in his eyes. 

The next few days pass in a haze of Chinese food, old shitty movies, and Brutus being constantly wrapped in blankets at Kane's behest (because dying apparently makes you very cold for a few days after). 

Right now they are curled in a pile of blankets, ignoring a quite interesting documentary on what influences Christo and Jeanne-Claude's art has made on the world at large, by sleeping. 

Thank heaven and hell the Shaman wasn't too late.

**Author's Note:**

> -One of the Latin words for balance is statera, pronounced (stat-air-a)  
> -Taijitu is a term for the symbol of the concept of yin and yang, commonly referred to as a "yin-yang symbol" in Western cuture  
> -A Lorgnette is a pair of spectacles with a handle, worn as a fashion accessory in the 1800's.  
> -The giant willow tree is based loosely off of Yggdrasil, the gigantic ash tree, that in Norse cosmology which everything, including the nine worlds, exists around.
> 
> If I made any mistakes feel free to lmk, I edited it a bunch but there's so much of it that I probably missed a lot. I felt incredibly awkward writing action-y scenes so I hope it turned out okay.
> 
> Quick shoutout to R who is the only reason I actually finished this, thanks for motivating me and supporting me going insane over writing this long of a fic, I don't know where I'd be without you.


End file.
